Seeeduino Stalker V3.1

Maybe you are very familiar with the Seeeduino stalker series, or maybe you are totally new to this feature rich Wireless Sensor Network Node. No matter what situation you are in, if you are going to make an outdoor data-logging application, you will find that Seeeduino Stalker is the best board.

The main purpose of creating this series is to create an X-bee carrier board so that users can make outdoor application more conveniently. Ever since the first version be released in 2009, Seeeders has been continuously collecting feedback from users and kept upgrading the board. there are 6 versions ever existed during the past 7 years, this summer we are excited to release the most updated member of the Seeeduino stalker family----Seeeduino Stalker V3.1.

Seeeduino Stalker V3.1 is not just a simple update of V3.0.The main surprise you'll find about the board is impressively low power consumption, in sleep mode, the output current of the whole board will be as low as 100uA,This is an upgrade truly derived from users feedback.(we really care about your opinion).let's see how we achieve it.

Seeeduino Stalker V3.1 is an application board with rich function. RTC, Lipo battery connector, Bee socket and SD card socket etc. The below overview image will introduce each part of the board to help you to know the board better.

NAME

FUNCTION

RTC BATTERY

Cell battery to power DS1337S

RTC_INT

RTC interrupt switch

Bee Serial Select

Bee RX/TX pin select, you can select D0/D1 or D6/D7

Bee Socket

Insert a Bee

CHARGE STATUS LED

OK: a green led, on while charge done. CH: a red led, on while charging

Seeeduino Stalker V3.1 is compatible with Arduino, there're many Analog pins, Digital Pin as well as Serial pins available to make your own application. Below pin map image will help you to decided which pin are free or not as well as the pin used.

This example is a demonstration of interrupt detection from DS1337 INT output. This feature is useful for data-logger functionality where the MCU is put to sleep mode when not in use and DS1337 INT wakes up the CPU periodically. This extends battery power. The complete operation is documented in the code.

There're 2 INT output from DS1337, INTA (connect to D2) and INTB (connect to D3). There's a switch to connect INTA/INTB and D2/D3, if you don't need the interrupt, you can just close the switch and save 1 or 2 I/O. Switch as below:

Open Arduino IDE, then File > Sketchbook > RTC > interrupts, this example will generate an interrupt every minutes. If you need other type of alarm, please refer to the code.

There's a micro SD card socket which you can insert a micro SD card to store some data. Stalker read/write the SD card via SPI interface. There're enough examples to operate a SD by using the SD library inside Arduino IDE.
Open your Arduino IDE, File > Examples > SD, you will get many examples.

Note

The CS pin is connected to D10 of Stalker, so you need to change the CS pin into D10 at the examples.

Bees are a series of modules that consist of rich function. Such as Wi-Fi, BLE, GPS as well as RF etc. With an XBee, Stalker can act as a node that with communication. A Stalker talk to another Stalker is no longer impossible. If you need more details about the Bees, below is some reference.

The principal application of Seeeduino Stalker v3.0 is data-logging of sensor signal like battery voltage, etc. along with the time-stamp. This sketch puts the MCU in sleep mode when not performing data sampling / logging operation. The complete implementation is documented very well in the code.

Open Arduino IDE, File > Sketchbook > StalkerV30_DataLogger_10Sec to open the example.
- This sketch logs battery voltage data to SD card configured by RTC.enableInterrupts(h, m, s) function.
- The periodicity is provided using h, m and s. Once an interrupt is detected, the next interrupt time is updated by advancing the h, m and s value. The DateTime Class comes handy for this.
- ex:- interruptTime = DateTime (interruptTime.get() + interruptInterval); //decide the time for next interrupt
- This sketch also produces verbose output i.e the various events happening inside MCU are displayed in serial terminal.

Here are some questions that we usually received from new users. If you have any other issues when you are using Seeeduino Stalker V3.1, welcome to the Community of Arduino where there are many professional users waiting to give you advices and also many advanced users providing plenty of ideas on how to use this products!

Q1: The RTC is reset to the original time when power off and on again.

There's a cell battery to power the RTC when there's no power from the system. The cell battery is supposed to last at least 3 years. You can check if the cell battery run off.

Q2: I can't upload sketch to Stalker V3.1

Firstly, check if your USB-UART connected to Stalker right, then check if you select the right port number and board(Arduino Fio or Arduino Arduino Pro or Pro Mini (3.3v , 8 MHz)w/ATmega328). Finaly, if you had inserted a Bee on the socket and the RX/TX is selected to D0/D1, you should take the bee off when uploading the skteck.

Q3: The RTC interrupt demo is not work, I can't get any interrupt.

Firstly, check if you set the alarm time right, and don't forget to put the RTC_INT switch to the right side.